


In the Depth of Winter

by yuletide_archivist



Category: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-22
Updated: 2005-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:24:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1631384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is winter solstice and Colin is awake to see sunrise in the secret garden. The garden is no longer secret  they have no secrets anymore  but no one could bear to cut the ivy away from the door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Depth of Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Written for thepiratequeen

 

 

"Winter is coming."

Mary rolls over in a half-sleep and opens her eyes. Colin brushes a lock of hair off her forehead and says, "I can hear it in the way the wind rattles the windowpanes." Mary reaches out and grabs his hand, resting her arm against Dickon's smooth back.

"It cannot reach us here, Colin. We are safe, love. Go to sleep."

Colin stares at the window for a long time, watching branches form misshapen shadows against the heavy curtains. Dickon mutters in his sleep and makes a low, short laughing noise. Colin watches them breath, nested together like small forest creatures in a mound of soft duvets and fleecy throws. It is already cold here, out on the moor. He shivers but does not want to wake them by huddling closer.

Winter is coming, he thinks, and it is going to be long.

*

The gardens dream under fresh mounds of snow. Daffydowndillys and crocuses, snowdrops and narcissus snore snug as bugs in their bulbous blankets. Dickon's steps clatter down frozen walkways as he makes note of tracks, discovers where summer friends are resting, laughs at birds kicking up big gobs of first snow with startled wings.

Dickon whistles and skips, chews on the end of a pipe and tosses a late apple up in the air. He takes a bite and it tastes like snow should taste, if snow tasted the way it ought to smell. Dickon thought it a particularly fine morning, if he thought anything at all.

He must have lost track of whatever his thoughts may have been because he doesn't notice Colin standing by the fountain until Dickon is almost on top of him.

"Here, then," he says, "Have some apple." Colin catches it deftly but does not take a bite.

"Colin?" Dickon asks, stepping closer until he is peering into his eyes. "Are you quite alright?"

Colin doesn't answer and Dickon knows that words are of no use in this time. He takes the apple from Colin and puts it on the ground, leaving it for birds or foxes - not that wintering animals are anywhere close to starved on the Misselthwaite grounds. He strokes Colin's cheek with the back of his hand and whispers into his ear, "Aye, step into the sunlight now."

Dickon falls to the ground with Colin on top of him. Colin does not say a word as he kisses Dickon, holds down his hands until Dickon's wrists grind into the dirt beneath the snow. Dickon exhales sharply and Colin gasps at his breath like a drowning man.

They do not say a word until they go inside, muddy and wet, to change clothes before dinner.

*

Mary wakes up in the middle of the night, thirsty and not sure if she's been dreaming. Colin and Dickon are twined together like saplings planted too close. She knows it is Dickon's arm tucked under her pillow because his skin is browner. Colin's entire head is lost in blankets.

It has only been recently that Colin began falling asleep before Mary. Now she watches them, keeping silent vigil.

Mary gets out of bed and pours a glass of water. She walks down the manor's empty halls running her hands along tapestries and doorframes. Maybe if she started counting now she could make it through all one hundred rooms. They aren't secret anymore. They've been aired out and dusted, rearranged and lived in.

She wonders if Colin and Dickon woke up when she got out of bed. She should wait a time, before returning. She's seen the way they look around her to meet each other's eyes. She sees it in Dickon's apologetic flutter of eyelashes when she catches his gaze, in Colin's set jaw and far-away look.

Mary puts her hands on her stomach and feels the baby moving within. She wonders what color eyes it will have, and if they'll be there to see it.

*

It is winter solstice and Colin is awake to see sunrise in the secret garden. The garden is no longer secret - they have no secrets anymore - but no one could bear to cut the ivy away from the door. Not everything needs to be shouted to the sky, as he once thought. Some victories should be kept behind lock and key, some loves left to bloom in darkness.

Colin knows that his thoughts have been dark. He comes to the garden at sunrise hoping for magic but his ten-year-old self could have told him that he isn't truly looking for magic. Only confidence tricks and a sense that the world pities him.

He does not know how it came to pass that he once more requires sympathy. When Colin learned to walk he wanted to explore the world, to lecture at penguins in Antarctica and see a real Rajah astride a giant elephant. When his father died he put down roots here in the manor, and the first time Dickon came to bed with him and Mary he felt that all the exploring he'd ever need to do would take place under this one roof.

Mary is with child and it frightens him. The selfish boy he once was wonders if he'll ever be able to leave this place. The first rays of sun begin to show over the garden walls, though the sun won't show his own face until much later. Colin sits in a cold stone chair like a tired old king, head in his hands, crying every last drop of magic out of his body.

*

Mary is crying. Dickon rocks her gently, awkwardly tries to wrap his arms around her strange new body. As natural as it is, he will never get used to the extra weight on her side of the bed, the way he has to stretch to hug her close. He strokes her hair and whispers nonsense words, making up small songs and chirping whistles. The wind is wuthering, oh yes. Wuthering with all its might, and the rain dashing against the windows. A magnificent storm, and somehow it's gotten into Mary, chased out all of those tears to join the rain.

Dickon wishes there was another body here to comfort her, another pair of hands to stroke and smooth. Colin left a month ago. He stated his intention the morning of the solstice and left after a tense and silent fortnight.

In the weeks after, Mary had to wake many times and calm Dickon the way he is now calming her.

"What is it, little bird? My little thrush. Tell me, whisper it in my ear now, like so."

Mary looks up at him. Her eyes are tired and rimmed with red.

"You must leave," she says, the words tumbling quickly out of her mouth. "You must go to him, and find him. I can't bear to think of him wandering alone."

Dickon tries to protest but she stops him. "You can't stay here with me. I won't have it. I've seen you. You haven't been the same. You are fading, Dickon, like roses taken away from the sun. I will be fine, and the baby when she comes. Your mother will look after me, and Martha. But go now, before I can say another word. I will not let you stay." She hiccups and begins to cry again, but quietly now.

"Aye, Mistress Mary." Dickon smoothes her hair away from her forehead. "If you say so, perhaps I must. Though you know it would not be my choosing. May I bring him back to you, if he is ready to come? To you and the baby? Will you allow us that?"

Mary nods and wipes her eyes. He holds her then, and rocks her gently until dawn.

*

A robin perches on the wall and gazes down at her with questioning black eyes. Mary knows it is not her robin. He moved on years ago, but perhaps it is one of his great-grandsons, or a distant cousin. He has the same inquisitive chirp, the same way of cocking his head just so.

Lily wakes up and squalls loudly into the clear spring air. The bird takes flight. Robins can handle many injustices but babies are not one of them. Mary bounces her on one knee and shushes her gently. Lily's eyes are gray with dark thick lashes; her nose is upturned and covered in freckles. Her hair is strawberry blond like summer wine.

She is a child of the moor.

Mary relishes this moment of silence. Susan and Martha are in the cottage doing the baking. Soon they'll be by with fresh milk and loaves of fine crusty bread. She's been so hungry lately, all the time.

The winter was dark, and long. The baby came early and the manor bustled with doctors and antiseptic hush. And then spring came, and pale yellow light started to flood through Mary's window, and even alone she began to learn again how to touch magic. Dickon's magic, and Colin's. They began to visit her in her head, during the dark times. Colin reading stories out of picture books about Africa and the Far East. Dickon arriving, arms weighed down with rabbits and lambs to curl around her as she slept. Fever dreams, Mary knew, and yet they comforted her.

When Mary awoke from her long sickness Martha brought her Lily. Mary didn't know love could feel this big. She thought she'd been on rather good terms with love, in the past. She didn't realize she'd been a naïf, blind and mewling in the face of this all-encompassing presence.

It is spring and her child clenches Mary's fingers in strong little fists. Pale green things are shooting out of the earth, more and more each day. She carries Lily around the garden, introducing rose bushes. They look dead, to the untrained eye. She tells Lily that in the summer, in just a matter of months from today, the garden will be a riot of color and sounds and voices. Lily laughs as if she understands.

Ivy rustles and the garden door swings open. Mary has been expecting Susan and Martha but somehow she knows it won't be them standing in the sunlight. Blond hair and red, arms linked, faces flush and somber.

"We're back," Colin says. Lily laughs again, and Mary runs to them.

 


End file.
